A troll is someone who goes around deliberately provoking people because he wants their outraged reactions, right? So how is this different from all those “transgressive” performance artists? Sure, they often have some sort of high-minded cause, but so does PETA. “Protect the animals” actually sounds a lot better than, “Expose society’s hypocritical discomfort with blah blah blah”, but few people here will argue that PETA isn’t a world-class troll. I feel there’s got to be some difference between that guy who sealed a cross in a bottle of urine, and someone who logs in to christianityisgreat.com and posts “You gillible idiot theists should be dragged kicking and screaming into the fourteenth century”, aside from the fact that the former gets paid a lot money. But I just can’t put my finger on it.
What fine distinction am I missing here? Or is there one?
Consider for example the movie Thank You for Smoking. The guy is something like an amoral slimeball, the sort who is entirely disingenuous in everything he does.
Yet, at the same time you can say that he’s so good at it that he’s raised it to an art form.
If something is a skill of such quality that you can support yourself by it, it sort of transcends derogative terms.
I’d say the yo-yo prankster guy is a performance artist/comedian, not so much a troll. He seems like he had a thought-out plan and never broke character, and I think he did it, ultimately, to amuse people rather than make them mad (or fired). Any 4chan who rickrolled religious stations? Trolls. Sure they made me laugh, but their ultimate goal was to piss off as many people as possible (with bonus humor).
(Was this just an excuse to post funny videos in GD? Perhaps.)
If you’re referring to Piss Christ, that’s a photograph, not performance art. Maybe you should consider having the title changed to “Are artists trolls?” or “Are photographers trolls?”
I don’t remember the details, but I’m pretty sure tere was an actual religious symbol in an actual jar of urine.
In any event, I sorta lump the deliberately offensive sort of conceptual art with performance art. It seems to me it comes from the same place- you try to create a message by shocking the public.
As has been mentioned, Piss Jesus is not performance art, and Serrano is not a performance artist.
I think most real performance artists are just attention whores, not necessarily trolls.
David Sedaris has a hilarious story in one of his books about his own brief stint as a performance artist and being mercilessly heckled by his own father during a live performance.
Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ was a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of urine. Although the art itself was a photograph, there were an actual crucifix and an actual jar of urine involved in the making of it. And yes, I suspect Mr. Serrano was trying to raise a bit of a ruckus more than he was trying to create a work of beauty (although it is an oddly beautiful photograph) or provoke serious discussion, or do anything really meaningful, so I guess that’s sort of a troll.
No, Serrano wasn’t trolling. All of his work involves using his own bodily fluids to create striking images. He has a genuine artistic goal of trying to transform the grossness of human body into visually beautiful images.
If you see Piss Jesus without knowing what is, it’s a very appealing image. That is his goal – the aesthetic transformation of the repulsive into the beautiful. He submerged the crucifix in urine purely for the way it looked, not to send any message about Jesus, per se.
As much as I loathe PETA, I don’t think I’d make that argument. They use flashy tactics to get attention, but their goal is to draw attention to animal rights causes (however they may undermine their own message by being jerks about it), not to piss people off. They’re attention whores for sure. Not trolls.
I’m not just talking about the OP here, but people online throw the T word around very quickly when discussing anyone who has very strong views, particularly views that are not popular, or expresses them in an uncompromising manner. Having those views or expressing them is not trolling. Making people think about a complex issue is not trolling even if you raise the issue in an ambiguous way. Trolling is victimizing or pissing people off for entertainment purposes. So yes, intent is pretty much the defining characteristic.
Piss Christ was definitely a photograph of a cross in a bottle of Serrano’s urine, by the way. I don’t think it’s a troll. The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili (what a name for an artist who works with dung!) probably wasn’t one either - if it was, it’s not in the simplistic way a lot of people said it was. When it’s done badly, some conceptual art looks like trolling because it goes to enormous lengths to make a simplistic or even idiotic point. I’d say it still isn’t trolling, but when I see something like Damian Hirst’s diamond-studded skull, I can’t help thinking “you’ve got to be kidding me.” So I can understand why people think that stuff was created to piss them off. But it’s a bad idea to assume that’s the case.
Performance artists are safe trolls. They attack pretty harmless targets. The Christians ? Come on. Unless they’re gun nuts with a gun mind, they come pretty senile and clumsy.
I have yet to wait to see a performance artist eat a bacon sandwich in a crowded mosque (in the Parisian suburbs) ; or another blast some nazi-rock in a synagogue.
Muslims don’t care if non-Muslims eat bacon, and why would they let a performance artist into a Mosque? Why would they be allowed to perform inside a synagogue either?
You haven’t seen performance artists inside Christian churches either.